A Sociology major and English minor, Marii usually reads from the sociology, fiction or science genres, but she shelves for Health, Psychology, Personal Growth and New Age. When she's not in class or at work, she's probably writing letters to people (in typical Pisces fashion), making new lavender-flavored foods and drinks, or trying to be at the beach.
If you liked Crying in H-Mart, give this one a try. It also deals with food and the expression of love through food, and reads like a love letter to the author's mother. But each author has a different story to tell, and each does it magnificently in their own way. Wong is a true poet - in the words of her own brother, "she says things differently." This book stretches the possibilities of storytelling, touching all the pressure points of fear, grief, rage, etc, while showing how all of these become smaller or more manageable when you have community and multiple forms of love around you. Read also if you are a fan of bell hooks - Wong expands hooks' idea of platonic love as the best model of all other kinds. This is just a beautiful, tender, and shining memoir, one of a kind.
Set in New York in the 1870s, this novel revolves around a man named Archer struggling to fulfill his aristocratic responsibilities while he falls secretly in love with a woman, Ellen, whom society does not accept. Ellen represents the opposite of the life others want for him - she is bold and experienced while his fiance is meek and innocent; she seeks legal independence while his family looks down on unmarried women; and she hears his longing for newness and free-thinking while others around him push him toward sameness and tradition.The novel builds toward his ultimate decision, with an ending either happy or tragic depending on your own values. This novel is a line in the sand, showing you as either in solidarity with Archer's heart, or with his friends' and family's sense of propriety. Which do you believe yourself to be? You may be surprised.
Alternating between telling the story of her childhood and a present-day visit from her mother, Auder gives a funny and intriguing representation of the turmoil that so often arises in close familial relationships. (With the added element of having a superstar for a mother.) Within these pages is also a hearty nod to the way in which siblings can be life rafts. I very much enjoyed this one!
(Content warning: This book deals heavily with the topic of trauma and sexual violence.)
I was so enamored by this debut by Chantal V. Johnson! The author has said herself that she wrote the book trying really hard not to resort to the popularized buzz words around trauma, and the result is a piece of literature that breathes new air into discussions surrounding issues that have long been around - like misogyny, feminine beauty standards, PTSD, eating disorders, etc. I appreciate how she shows the minute ways in which past trauma continually impacts people - in an Uber, for example, when the driver makes a wrong turn and Vivian suddenly plunges into a fear-spiral about getting abducted. This is a really important work about cultural allowances of everyday sexual violence. It's witty, it's engrossing, and it entreats the reader to examine the world around them for ways they are contributing to the brokenness.
Choose this book if you are up for some experimental writing! This story is not told chronologically but if you are like me, you'll appreciate it for the occasional vignettes that speak to some part of your life in a relieving, "wow-I'm-so-glad-somebody-put-
this-to-words" kind of way.
This book is a masterclass on making characters come alive on the page. Cara Romero is a Dominican mother and immigrant trying to get a job in the middle of the Great Recession in New York. In a matter of 12 sessions (each chapter = one session), she spills the secrets of her life to a career counselor who will ultimately decide whether she is job-ready. In the course of these sessions, we learn about Cara's family of origin, the people who depend on her, and the depth of her grief for her estranged son whose sexuality she had trouble understanding. This is a loving story about the difficulty - and necessity - of change.
This is a really beautiful memoir about a Black boy navigating a rough upbringing and leaning on various "geek" comforts to get through. Even if you don't like anime, Pokémon or video games yourself, you can still appreciate the way they formed a world in which Joey could feel safe and in control. This is a really impactful piece of writing, one which fills a gap in the literary world and asks readers to consider what we lose by undervaluing both Black boyhood and nerd culture.
Hua Hsu spent 20 years writing this book as an homage to a friend, Ken, who was randomly murdered in a carjacking one night after a college party. The first half details their friends' lives in college at Berkeley in the 90s, and the sense of infinitute you feel when you're young. The second half is a completely arresting tribute to Ken and their friendship as Hsu struggles to process the grief of losing Ken, and the guilt of surviving without him. I can't put into words how good this is -- just read it for yourself and let Hsu tell you how much he loved Ken.
The protagonist, an Asian-American woman and a doctor, weaves medical and scientific language into this story about family heartache, the immigrant experience, and the cost of success in America - how it severs the body, amputates the family, and intrudes on the mind and memory. As Joan herself says, "if I could hold success in my hand, it would be a beating heart." The prose is sharp, precise, full of puns and double meaning, and plays on the translation of words between languages in order to brilliantly capture the feeling of being Other in America.
"Most people I know live their lives moving in a constant forward direction, the whole time looking backward." In this book, a time travel machine technician goes between universes saving people from (ab)using time travel in their efforts to fix their disappointing lives. When he's not doing that, he's searching for his missing father, who disappeared after inventing time travel. Within this strange and mind-bending plot, Yu addresses some of life's most philosophical questions. Is time a forward trajectory? Do regret and nostalgia serve us? How do we reconcile with the ache of a parent's lost dream? This book is an unconventional but beautiful tribute from a son to his father, and calls on us to reimagine the way we think about time.
This book taught me more about what happens after someone dies than anything or anyone else I’ve ever asked. I don’t think that’s because people didn’t want me to know, but instead because most people just simply don’t know themselves. Which is precisely what Campbell wanted to address by writing this book—why in our society are we so averse to talking about, knowing and seeing death? And how much more of the human experience could we access if allowed ourselves to stand at the edge and peer over? In this journalist’s journey through so many careers in death, I got to see how death work is “some kind of love.” This gave me a solace which I had never had before about the people I have lost and the ways they must have been taken care of even after I could no longer see their body. That solace alone makes this book worth reading.
J.P. Brammer writes from a very specific background as a gay Mexican-American man raised in rural Oklahoma, but these are identities you don't need to personally claim in order to both love and benefit from this book. His writing style makes you forget you are reading and instead feel as if you're having a conversation with someone who is deeply invested in helping you seize the best from life. And he's hilarious, so that's a plus.
A timeless piece of writing, with reflections on battling cancer, lesbian motherhood, Black American womanhood, community organizing, and love. An important voice to familiarize yourself with now, as Audre Lord's wisdom and vision carry lessons that could help us traverse our most persisting social issues if only we would listen.
biography, women's studies, African American, LGBTQ+, cancer, sexuality
If you are interested in the concept of material things having spirit, read this book! Tiya Miles does a gorgeous job of describing how a mother's love was passed down through generations of enslaved women via a fabric sack. This book also addresses the archival erasure which prevents us from ever truly knowing some families' stories. Miles uses her expertise as a historian and an empath to speculate on the ways in which the inherited sack might have carried a mother's hopes of giving her daughter a chance at survival and resistance during a period of American history where, for Black women, such things were against the odds.
The author, having recently lost her son to suicide, transcends all the ordinary rules of grieving and constructs a timeless world in which she can speak with her son again. Their imagined conversations are so honest, yearning and specific that you feel as if they are in fact sitting in a room together once more. This is a gorgeous meditation on loss and the funny things it does to a person, reminding us that there is no "ordinary" way to grieve after all.
Okay so Michael Pollan told you what to eat, Michael Greger told you where not to eat, and maybe you've dipped your toe in some other books about food (maybe even by people not named Michael). But I promise you, you're missing out if you don't read The Secret Life of Groceries. This book will not settle any debates about what diets we should or should not be on, but it does something even better--it takes us through the world events and societal shifts which led to the relationship we now have with the grocery store. He describes this relationship as one in which we roam the grocery aisles looking not just for food but for confirmation of who we believe ourselves to be. As Lorr reminds us, food is the business of eating but grocery is the business of desire. Along the way, he takes a look at some of the hidden players in the grocery industry--from transport to meat packing to the grocery floor and finally to YOU and your very own role in the industry. In this book, you will see things you will never be able to unsee (in an important way!) and at the very least, you will get some good laughs.
